Two former Apple executives may be facing securities fraud charges brought by …

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There has been a lot of allegation and investigation in the Apple stock options backdating probe, but it appears the SEC is getting ready to throw the book at a few people for the roles they apparently had in the backdating. In particular, the SEC looks to be taking action against Apple's former General Council Nancy Heinen and former CFO Fred Anderson.

While backdating of stock options isn't necessarily illegal, in this case it does appear to have been done illegally. In particular, Heinen is alleged to have approved the forging of documents involved in the backdating of the options. Rather unsurprisingly, forged documents make backdated options illegal, so Ms. Heinen may have a hard time mounting a defense. She is also implicated in another backdating transaction which she and Fred Anderson benefited from, along with a number of other Apple executives. In this case, Heinen and Anderson chose to backdate options and chose the date as well. This means that they earned more from the options than they should have, which the SEC also doesn't like.

It's important to note that these aren't criminal charges—only securities fraud charges brought by the SEC. But these charges are still a fairly big deal, as getting in trouble with the SEC isn't a good thing... particularly if you're a CFO, since the penalties range from fines to restrictions on what jobs you can hold. Both Heinen and Anderson are arguing that they were merely following the instructions of other board members, and/or that they weren't familiar with the rules for backdating. Given that Heinen was the general counsel, I would expect her to be familiar with the rules; and after the Enron and related scandals, I suspect that both defenses won't hold very much weight with the SEC.